In the last two decades, exponential growth in various technologies-from global communications networks to fast, low-cost digital prototyping-has radically transformed everyday life, to the point that many speak of a new industrial revolution. If the last revolution was about making perfect objects (millions of them), this one is about making just one, or a few. This panel will investigate how the maximum expression of design today is in the processes, open systems, and tools that shape society by enabling self-organization, platforms of collaboration, and decentralized networks of production.
Panel:

Joseph Grima

Joseph Grima has pursued a career as a curator, essayist, and critic in the fields of architecture, art, and design. He directed Storefront for Art and Architecture and is currently Editor of Domus. He has created installations for the Venice Architecture Biennial, among others, and his books include Shift: SANAA and the New Museum (2008).

Jeffrey Inaba

Jeffrey Inaba is the founder of INABA, a firm that specializes in architecture, urban design, and public art. He is Director of C-Lab, a research unit at Columbia University, and the Features Editor of Volume magazine. He is also the author of numerous publications, including Adaptation: Architecture, Technology and the City (2012).

Emeka Okafor

Emeka Okafor is an entrepreneur and venture catalyst. He is the curator of Maker Faire Africa and was the director for TED Global 2007 that took place in Arusha, Tanzania. Other associations include TED Fellowships and the African Innovation Foundation. His interests include sustainable technologies in the developing world and paradigm-breaking technologies in general.

Thaddeus Pawlowski

Thaddeus Pawlowski is an urban designer who, since Hurricane Sandy, has been working as an advisor on long-term planning for the Mayor’s Office of Housing Recovery. Working in the Department of City Planning, he specializes in large-scale infrastructure, neighborhood revitalization, and climate change adaptation.

Jennifer Wolfe

Jennifer Wolfe is Co-organizer and Design Lead for Maker Faire Africa, an international organization which sharpens the focus on locally generated, bottom-up prototypes of technologies in Africa. Wolfe is an advocate for using Africa’s informal systems as distribution models for personal design and manufacturing around the world. She is also cofounder of what will be one of Lagos’s first maker spaces, the Bronze Belt Foundry.

J. Meejin Yoon

J. Meejin Yoon is the founder of MY Studio and cofounder of Höweler + Yoon Architecture. She is an Associate Professor and Director of the Undergraduate Program in the Department of Architecture at MIT. Yoon is the recipient of the United States Artist Award in Architecture/Design, the Rome Prize in Design, and a Fulbright Scholarship. She is the author of several books, including Expanded Practice, Höweler + Yoon Architecture / MY Studio (Princeton Architectural Press, 2009).